Pherecydes of Syros: Biography, Achievements & Lasting Legacy

Pherecydes of Syros (; Ancient Greek: Φερεκύδης ὁ Σύριος; fl. 6th century BCE) was an Ancient Greek mythographer and proto-philosopher from the island of Syros. Little is known about his life and death. Some ancient testimonies counted Pherecydes among the Seven Sages of Greece, although he is generally believed to have lived in the generation after them. Others claim he may have been a teacher of Pythagoras, a student of Pittacus, or a well-traveled autodidact who had studied secret Phoenician books.

Pherecydes wrote a book on cosmogony, known as the "Pentemychos" or "Heptamychos". He was considered the first writer to communicate philosophical ideas in prose as opposed to verse. However, other than a few short fragments preserved in quotations from other ancient philosophers and a long fragment discovered on an Egyptian papyrus, his work is lost. However, it survived into the Hellenistic period and a significant amount of its content can be conjectured indirectly through ancient testimonies. His cosmogony was derived from three divine principles: Zas (Life), Cthonie (Earth), and Chronos (Time). In the narrative, Chronos creates the Classical elements and other gods in cavities within the earth. Later, Zas defeats the dragon Ophion in a battle for supremacy and throws him in Oceanus. Zas marries Chthoniê, who then becomes the recognizable Earth (Gê) with forests and mountains. Chronos retires from the world as creator, and Zas succeeds him as ruler and assigns all beings their place.

Pherecydes' cosmogony forms a bridge between the mythological thought of Hesiod and pre-Socratic Greek philosophy; Aristotle considered him one of the earliest thinkers to abandon traditional mythology in order to arrive at a systematic explanation of the world, although Plutarch, as well as many other writers, still gave him the title of theologus, as opposed to the later physiologoi of the Ionian school. Later hellenistic doxographers also considered him as one of the first thinkers to introduce a doctrine of the transmigration of souls to the Ancient Greek religion, which influenced the metempsychosis of Pythagoreanism, and the theogonies of Orphism. Various legends and miracles were ascribed to him, many of which tie him to the development of Pythagoreanism or Orphism.